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Opening Day – Hometown League

Welcome to opening day of the Hometown League! Jason and I are stoked to start another collaboration with you guys. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

WHAT IS THE HOMETOWN LEAGUE? The Hometown League is about celebrating all the greatness that is a hometown. Go for the deep cut stories in that town, the urban legends, the odd and interesting. Tell a story, be unique. The more clever the better. Don’t plagiarize. Don’t use the names of real teams, don’t copy existing designs. Make your design cool and appealing to people outside of your town.

We also want to encourage you to create design for towns that might not be your own but that we know Clinkers will love. The towns where we ship the most hats to are San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco (The Bay), New York, Dallas, and Phoenix.

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS: You guys will name your team and design your own cap logos, you email your designs to us and we post them on Clink in the order we receive them. We will all comment on the designs. When we get enough designs, then we’ll announce a deadline. For now, consider it a rolling deadline. We’ll then pick the concepts with the best story, team name, mass appeal, and design.

THIS IS WHAT YOU’LL GET IF YOUR TEAM IS PICKED FOR THE LEAGUE.
• You’ll have your cap produced and worn by Clinkers from all over the World.
• You’ll be celebrated on The Clink Room as a master of your craft.
• You’ll receive $200 gift card to grab your hat you designed when it goes live in The Clink Room store.

In the Entry Form folder you’ll find a template for you to submit your team’s design.

USE THE TEMPLATE. Adobe Illustrator is our preference, but we’ll try to work with you if you don’t know it. You will also find the thread and fabric color swatches for production. The colors appear differently in Illustrator than they do it real life, just approximate. Here’s the link to download everything that you’ll need to enter your design (2.2MB zip file)….

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR DESIGN
• E-mail it to contests@theclinkroom.com
• “HOMETOWN LEAGUE” needs to appear in the subject line of your email.
• We prefer your artwork to be in vectored format. If you can save as .AI , .EPS or .PDF that would be best.

AND REMEMBER…
• Use the templates.
• Don’t plagiarize. (We will send hit men to your home if you do.)
• “HOMETOWN LEAGUE” needs to appear in the subject line of your email.
• Have fun!

We looked at the numbers at the end of last year and we realized we had to adjust the prizes to have it make sense for the reboot of The Clink Room. We do The Clink Room for fun and to show off our work. We hope that you guys feel the same way. I hope that makes senses.

Glad you guys understand where we’re coming from with this. We’re working as fast as we can on the reboot of Clink. A lot has to happen but it’s moving. The new blog and store are being built as we speak.

The prize is kind of a bonus for me. I like the creative outlet, and I do it mostly for the exposure and opportunity to be critiqued by talented people in my dream job. My only concern about the prize is that in its current form, I wouldn’t use it. Of course, its always a long shot to even win, so I’ll cross that bridge when I hopefully get there.

@ Kevin W – Aesthetically, fitted’s don’t exactly suit my tiny dome. So I just figure “if” I were to ever win a Clink comp one of these days, I’d just buy up a bunch of my own hats for family and friends to wear.

Like you said, these comps are for your creative outlet/exposure etc. So if you’re like me and you enter these comps because you LOVE doing it, then it’s simple, spread the LOVE.

ps. I look forward to seeing what you come up with this league, you had some good ones last league!

How do we tell our team’s background story with just a team name and logo? As you know from the Shadow League, I’m all about the wacky background story and without it there are going to be a lot of designs that people just don’t get…

The “story” section of the template has been removed to keep each contest post shorter. They we’re getting too long with a big template for each entry. I’m convinced that you should be able to tell a story with just the design and that story telling elements can be added to the template provided. Seeing the entires that have been submitted already, there are lots of places to tell the story of the design on the shorter entry form.

@Casey – I’m all for the shorter template, it puts the design front row centre. I get what you’re saying about the long posts too. I guess we can always add our background stories in the comments section for those who just don’t get it.
I can’t wait to see the first entries!

I understand where you guys are coming from but I would expect more then just a 200 gift card from people that know the industry and have done well in it. Some of the submissions are pro quality and a pro wouldn’t even think of doing a design for 200 bucks. You know that you sell these hats for what an average of 35 a piece it cost you 12-15 bucks to make… and you only offer 200? Lost a little respect for you guys. If it was just for the “fun” and to show off your work. You would offer more to your loyal fans…Its not like you have a competition every month! I would prefer you to charge 5 bucks as an entry fee to have a decent incentive then just 200 gift card bucks which is only going to buy me what? 5 hats which only cost you a total of 75 bucks to produce? I prefer the winner can just buy hats for their family at whole sale price…

I think Will makes some valid points. (the $5 entry fee would bring in a ton of money) But my understanding was that these contests were started to give your average Joe a chance to design a hat.

Obviously some professionals caught wind of it and started to enter (and win) but thats the nature of the beast when you have an online contest. As a professional designer myself, I understand that the time i spend on an entry isnt gonna be paid for. Its like any other crowdsourcing job, if you decide to enter you know what youre getting yourself into. You might win and end up with a nice addition to your portfolio…or you might not and that time you spent will be considered a waste.

The bottom line is no one is making anyone enter the contest. If you decide to, you know what the deal is from the jump and its a decision you made.

Lots of things are changing with The Clink Room and everything that we’re doing is in service of upping the frequency of the contests, bettering the experience of entering the contests, bettering the interaction between Clinkers, and increasing the quality of the prizes.

In the meantime we want to make the contests fun, show off everyone’s work, and improve The Clink Room. We’ve taken no money out The Clink Room, in fact the opposite is true. But there have been other benefits for us, like we’ve found several people who work for us regularly because of the quality of their work they’ve submitted for the contests. I know some Clinkers have gotten jobs because of their exposure on Clink. We’ve also made great relationships with new partners like Hat Club who we now work with regularly.

We’ve always found that by having fun and doing the things we love create amazing unexpected opportunities that you could never have imagined would occur.

At the end of the day our right no one is being forced to enter and you go into this knowing what your getting at the end if you even win.

I have worked in the clothing industry and know how things work in the background and I know for a fact that a 200 gift card is at the end of a the day a joke and Casey must know this. Any kind of justification falls short. If it was for fun you wouldn’t be selling products on here period. You befit from the exposure as much as any of us and if this is the way you show gratitude then I want no part in it.

There are plenty other sites that offer these types of competitions with greater respect for the designer. Time is time no matter how you look at it. 200 gift card is honestly sad.

I feel like you should set up a donate button on here because I would be the first to give 10 bucks towards the competition just not to be felt like I’m being taken advantage of if I was participating.

Early Birds & Kraken done on hat club !!
But please, give us (worldwide clinkers) our Clink Store back !!
Clink room Shipping is 14$ delivery in 7 to 10 days (here in France) and no custom fees.
Hat club use FED ex : 40$ + 25$ custom at delivery… That’s fucking expensive !!
So i hope you will not use the hat club as your primary dealer…
Thanks.
Clink this ass week-end and wish you all a great Super Bowl party !!!!!

I dont really understand the hate for the prize money. This is a “fun collaboration” for amateur and pro designers. We’re here because we have similar interests in Sports Design. Its an opportunity to get ideas and critique each other on designs. If you want recognition, go out and get a job in design, get paid the money you want. But leave the bullshit out of the Clink Room.

I am disappointed we werent told that Clink hats that were previously unavailable have been selling on the Hat Club website, and pretty disappointed in the shipping costs. I really wanted an Early Birds cap, but that Maroon and Blue colourway is shocking..

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